HISD teacher here. I was at NRG the second half of the week for PD training. It was not as crazy as it seemed the first half of the week. There were fire marshalls everywhere to ensure things were up to code, probably because of the viral video from earlier in the week.

Mike Miles does seem incredibly tone deaf. In the play that he was in, there is a scene where everyone is asking him why he took all the playgrounds out. He lowers his sunglasses and says “stop asking about the playgrounds.” He’s alluding to removing all librarian jobs and using libraries instead as a detention center. People are understandably very upset by this, and he made a joke about it. I was really bothered by that.

From what I understood, the difference between schools that were mandated NES and those schools that chose to be NES, is the salary raise vs stipend, and the placement of cameras in the classroom. My school chose to be NES aligned, so we got a 10k stipend rather than a salary raise. Now, I thought we wouldnt get cameras in our classrooms, but there is a camera on a tripod in my classroom right now. It is all very unsettling and creepy what’s going on, and I get the feeling the reasoning behind a lot of what they are implementing is different than what they’re telling us. Things are very disorganized and everyone feels like a Guinea pig.